Pew Internet Survey Reveals Variety of Cell Phone Uses

What do you use your cell phone for? As a mini-computer for in-depth internet searches? As a mobile camera? As an on-the-go gaming system? 83% of adults in America own some sort of cell phone – and we all use them for a variety of entertainment and utilitarian purposes.

A Pew Internet survey released earlier this week (completed over the phone with a “nationally representative” group) revealed that text messaging and taking pictures are the two top mobile phone activities.

What Else Does The Survey Reveal?

The survey goes in-depth with exactly what that 83% of adults use their cell phones for. There were many interesting findings, but the most interesting were the following:

– 51% use their cell phones for “quick information retrieval,” with a quarter of them having had a situation where they had trouble doing something because they did not have their cell phones with them.

– 42% of people use their cell phones for entertainment purposes in order to avoid being bored (hello, Angry Birds!). This makes marketing within gaming platforms extremely lucrative.

– 13% of people pretend to be engrossed with something on their phones to avoid social interaction (most of us are guilty of this one – I mean some of those elevator interactions can be awkward. So we even more awkwardly pretend like we actually have cell service as we’re waiting to reach the lobby).

– 20% reported feeling frustrated because of slow download times on their mobile phones.

The survey adds, “One third of American adults (35%) own a smartphone of some kind, and these users take advantage of a wide range of their phones’ capabilities. Fully nine in ten smartphone users use text messaging or take pictures with their phones, while eight in ten use their phone to go online or send photos or videos to others.” So, eight in ten smartphone users will likely use mobile technology to access the internet. Likely, many will go straight to Google while they are on the go, perhaps to look up local restaurants, businesses or other establishments with which they plan to engage almost immediately.

This is Why Mobile SEO is Important

The fact is that with mobile SEO you can reach a huge amount of people– with 44% of all American cell phone owners using their devices to access the internet. That’s nearly half of all cell phone users. If 44% of people looking for a particular service were attending an informational (non-business specific) marketing event (I know this type of event doesn’t necessarily exist, but you get the point), would your business miss out on attending this event and reaching out to this group? No way!

Optimizing your site for mobile access is one of the best things you can do (after optimizing your regular website) for your business. Optimizing a mobile site means doing different, local and specific keyword research (try to use less long-tail and more short and to the point keywords), ensuring quick load time (remember that 20% of cell phone users that were frustrated because of slow downloading? A frustrated user is likely not going to do business with you) and emphasizing usability and navigability. If you maximize your options with your mobile site, you will likely rank higher on the SERPs and therefore have greater access to the nearly half of all cell phone users who access the internet via their mobile devices.

Get More Information

EverSpark Interactive is a full service SEO company located in Atlanta. We blog daily about the Search Engine Optimization and interactive marketing landscapes; for more information about mobile SEO, Google, or anything else going on in today’s search marketing world, check back with our blog to see updates about recent news and trends within these areas as well as to obtain free tips for developing your site’s SEO strategy. For questions that are more specific to your business or website, or if you want to know more about our Atlanta Atlanta SEO company, give us a call at 770-481-1766.